In my Yuri’s Night post I told you about Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and showed my new Yuri Gagarin temporary tattoo. Over two weeks, many showers, and many training runs later, the tattoo still adorned my huge bicep (and by huge, I mean muscle-less).
This past Sunday, Wife and I ran the La Jolla Half Marathon and Yuri came with us. So because he came with us, I now declare that the Yuri Gagarin temporary tattoo (as shown in the picture above) the first Yuri Gagarin temporary tattoo to run the La Jolla Half Marathon.
The morning of the race, we arrived at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, the starting point, an hour early (around 6:30 am), stretched, and hung out trying to stay warm. A few minutes after 7:30 am the horn finally sounded and we began to run. At first we ran through neighborhoods with narrow roads which meant we could not pass as many people as we would of liked to. However, this predicament changed when we came to Torrey Pines State Reserve.
The infamous hill in the reserve forced many runners to become walkers. Luckily (and much to Wife’s chagrin) we had worked a lot of hills into our training runs and so we ran the entire hill (about 1.5 miles straight up) and passed a lot of people! Unfortunately it slowed us down and our dreams of running the half marathon in under 2 hours ran away.
After the grueling hill, my mother met us at mile 8 and handed us fresh water bottles to help us finish the run and cheered us on.
With the uphill comes a downhill and a large downhill is was, just as steep as the uphill but slightly shorter. The downhill sped us up but the planners of the race knew this and thwarted our haste.
For the last mile the planners once again forced us to run uphill again and after 12 miles I just wanted to lie down and sleep. Many more people fell to the hill’s angular power but Wife kept nagging me and we ran it. Then came the last steep downhill to the finish line and we sprinted just to end it.
We officially crossed the finish line with a time of 2:04:53, about 8 minutes faster than our Carlsbad time. I placed 1467 place in the men’s division and Wife placed in 823 in the women’s.
With the race now over, we would like to thank my mother, for the fresh water bottles and for coming to cheer us on (especially since this race had about 5 people on the sidelines to clap, come on La Jolla!), and Vanessa and (her best-friend-stealing-to-another-country-boyfriend) Mark for greeting us at the finish line.
While not our favorite run due to the massive hills, and the lack of space, cheers, and a decent t-shirt, we are now two thirds of the way to the Triple Crown and have the America’s Finest City Half Marathon in August. So we will take the week off, start training again, and see you all in August!
